The present invention relates to a method for creating browsing data of an information searching apparatus which is realized on an information processor such as a work station or a personal computer handling various data such as a text, spread sheet, graph, bitmap, video, audio, etc. and a method for searching information and particularly to a method for creating browsing data which can easily create browsing data and a method for searching information suited to play a part of video and audio. Furthermore, the present invention relates to a method for searching information which imposes little burden on the hardware even when large capacity data is searched.
In an information processor such as a work station or a personal computer, data such as a text, document, spread sheet, graph, bitmap, or graphic which is created by an application program is stored in a memory such as a disk as a file (hereinafter these data are called "application data"). By designating the name of a file or selecting an icon corresponding to the file (which is expressed as a small picture so as to make the content thereof easily understandable intuitively), an operator can designate the file to be accessed. In this case, the operator designates the necessary file by associating the file name or the icon picture with the file content.
However, a general icon comprises a picture determined for each application which is used for creation of a file and the file name, so that it is difficult to grasp the content of the file fully only by these pieces of information.
In the art (the prior art 1) described in the specification of Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 5-33020 (1993), as data for grasping the content of each file (hereinafter, this data is referred to as "browsing data" and grasping the content of a file by referring to this data is referred to as "browsing"), reduced image data of the file content is created and the image data is displayed as an icon. By doing this, without invoking the application program creating the file, the content of the application data can be grasped.
In the art (the prior art 2) described in the specification of Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 5-170021 (1993), browsing data is created by performing an image operation for displaying the application data on the display and moving it or by using data to be outputted to a printer. By doing this, without changing the application program at all, data corresponding to the unique data of the application program can be created. Even if application data extends over a plurality of pages, the content can be grasped by flipping pages.
On the other hand, recently, audio data and video data are often handled on a computer as the disk capacity increases and the CPU performance improves. These data are played with audio along the time axis unlike conventional data, so that the content thereof cannot be grasped only by display on the display unit like a conventional still image. Therefore, when these time-based data are selected for conventional browsing, the content thereof is indicated by playing the whole or a part of the data.
The aforementioned prior art 1 is a basic art of browsing and the aforementioned prior art 2 is intended to allow a user to create browsing data simply in addition to the prior art 1. However, in the prior art 2, to create browsing data from the screen to be displayed on, it is necessary to display the application data to be displayed on the display screen beforehand. Therefore, to create browsing data in batch immediately before browsing, it is necessary to invoke the application first and display each application data on the screen, so that a problem arises that it is troublesome.
In the prior art 2, to create browsing data from data to be outputted to a printer, it is premised that a printing function is added to the application. As a result, a problem arises that browsing data cannot be created from application data having no printing function.
In the prior art 2, when browsing data is created, the browsing data is always saved as bitmap data. When data of the same content is saved, the amount of bitmap data is larger than that of text data or graphic data. As a result, when browsing data of many files is created, the total of amounts of browsing data increases. Therefore, a problem arises that to save browsing data, a large capacity memory is necessary.
In the prior art 2, when the content of a file is read by flipping pages, there is no upper limit to the number of pages of browsing data to be created. As a result, when application data has a large amount of pages, browsing data also has a large amount of pages and the amount of browsing data increases. Therefore, a problem arises that to save browsing data, a large capacity memory is necessary.
When the whole of time-based data is played for browsing it and the playing time of the data is extremely long, a problem arises that unless the playing time of one data ends, the next data cannot be browsed, and the browsing efficiency lowers, and the operability gets worse. On the other hand, when only a part of the data is played, it is difficult to automatically extract the appropriate characteristic part of the data, so that it may be considered to be difficult to search for the target data efficiently.